U.S.

35,000 Feet: Where Sexual Harassment Can Still Get a Pass

When I first started working as a flight attendant, a CEO of a telecommunications giant pinched me on the you-know-what. I didn’t know what to do, so I nervously laughed and ran to the galley where I would’ve cursed him out — if he hadn’t followed me there.

That’s when he did it again. Right in front of my crew.

We all just stood there in disbelief, staring at one another until he disappeared back to his first-class seat. No one said a word. We were all in shock.

I didn’t report it, largely because I didn’t know who to complain to. The union? Human resources? A 1-800 number? I had no clue.

And I figured it was the sort of thing that came with the job of being a flight attendant. I knew the airline wouldn’t want to be inconvenienced by a call to law enforcement over a nonviolent, though unruly, passenger. Especially since the only person offended was me, an employee.

We’ve come a long way from “We really move our tail for you,” and “I’m Cheryl, Fly me."

An ad from National Airlines 1971 campaign, featuring flight attendants by name.

Image: National Airlines

But even in this age of “Keep Climbing” and “Fly the Friendly Skies,” sexual harassment happens much more often than it should. (According to a survey done earlier this year, 27% of the flight attendants that responded had been sexually harassed in the previous twelve months.)

Maybe it's because we come into brief contact with so many people. They come, they go, we never see them again. Anonymity can bring out the worst in people.

Flight attendants aren’t alone. My friend, Bob, a pilot, once had a female passenger put her hands on his behind when he tried to squeeze into a fully occupied exit row to peer out the window to get a look at what might have been a problem with the wing. “Woohoo! Get some!” another woman shouted. Passengers nearby laughed. Bob laughed too. When he returned to the cockpit and told the other pilot what happened, she laughed as well. So did I. Mostly because I can't imagine a pilot being treated that way. What it is about airplanes that makes people think it’s okay to behave that way?

When I tweeted I was writing about sexual harassment, a flight attendant on an Asian carrier reached out. Her company policy is to ignore in-flight harassment: It actually states that in her flight manual. And her manager, who is also her union rep, was quick to pull that section out after she complained about unwanted advances from a first-class passenger.

If a passenger reaches out to her in any way — say he invites her to dinner — she’s expected to respond with a thank you and give him a business card with her company email address on it. Once somebody sent her a bra with a note saying it would make her look more sexy. She was instructed to send a thank you. Because it might have come from a corporate VIP.

Whenever I write something serious I get comments that have nothing to do with the topic matter, but everything to do with how flight attendants look, and how great the service is on the foreign carriers. I can’t help but cringe. Wonder.

Whenever somebody asks what happened to the good old days when the “stewardesses” were glamorous and wore mini skirts and hot pants, I always point to one of my more senior coworkers and say, “There she is, still working!” Only she’s traded in her hot pants for reading glasses. Nothing wrong with that. People forget we’re human too. We’re allowed to grow old, just like passengers. Crazy, I know.

Of course it doesn’t help when airlines show off their sexy crew in calendars, or have safety videos featuring dancing flight attendants and swimsuit models. Because who cares about safety when the crew isn’t scantily dressed or getting down? It’s safety! Marketing the attractiveness of the flight crew is not in airlines' past, it's in its present.

I think that gives some passengers the idea that just because they bought a ticket they can do whatever they want. Say whatever they want. It’s our word against theirs, and we’re not paying customers.

A Virgin Australia promotional image, 2014.

Image: Virgin Australia

Some airlines, particularly foreign carriers, offer contracts for flight attendants that very rarely get renewed more than once or twice. This enables those airlines to end employment contracts and keep their workforce young and fun. Sexy. (Also underpaid. In the U.S. new hires start out making between $14,000-$18,000 a year.) There are Middle Eastern airlines that make flight attendants resign after they become pregnant or get married, an Asian carrier with only one size of uniform, an Indian carrier who only hires females between the ages of 18-22. Males, on the other hand, can be older.

In the U.S. we have laws that protect employees, but harassment is still an issue.

“These young girls are just too afraid to say anything for fear of losing their job. Nothing has changed,” another flight attendant who has experienced harassment said.

“Most new hires want to please," a flight attendant who has been with an airline for almost a year wrote me on Facebook. "If we’re sweet, but short, some passengers are taken aback by it because it can come off as a little bitchy. It's just all those corny jokes..."

It’s been eighteen years since my incident with The Pincher. As a young woman just starting out I was afraid to speak up, afraid I might lose my job. With years of experience under my navy blue belt, I have no problem directly confronting an offender. But that's because I've developed a thick skin.

Now there's a form we can issue if a passenger gets out of line. It states authorities will meet the flight at its destination if there's a prolonged problem. I’ve seen it get used, but I think a lot of flight attendants are more likely to let things go. Nobody wants to delay a flight, write a report, or talk to a manager on a day off.

What happens next, I guess, depends on the scenario, based on a story from a coworker of mine who had a well-known jazz musician on board her flight years ago. He flashed her not once, not twice, but every time she passed the bathroom he had locked himself inside. Authorities met the flight ... but decided not to press charges since she wasn't a passenger. Just a flight attendant.

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